


I Thought I Was Supposed to be Glowing

by AngieWithMels



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Babies, Established Relationship, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 11:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1856332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngieWithMels/pseuds/AngieWithMels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Queens are expecting!</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Thought I Was Supposed to be Glowing

**Author's Note:**

> This entire story is heavily, heavily based on my own pregnancy.

Felicity scowled into the mirror. Another zit. Right on her chin. she went to try and pop it but her nails were too long, tough, and sharp and they just indented her skin and made a huge red mark on her face. The pimple right above her left eyebrow was still red and angry from the constant picking from earlier.

Her skin had been scrubbed in the shower but was already starting to oil up. She looked down her bathrobe at her chest and cried out in frustration. Her cleavage was covered in tiny little red spots, her breasts were covered in stretch marks and the skin had become so pale that the veins underneath stood out like highways on a roadmap.

Pregnancy was not a good look for Felicity.

Oliver never said anything, bless his heart. He took the occasional verbal abuse without complaint, accepted her blubbery apologies when she realized what she was doing, and made sweet love to her despite the huge watermelon-esque shape her body had changed into.

She, on the other hand, complained constantly. Pregnancy was miserable. Her boobs, which had gone up a cup size at around six weeks had been fun! Then when they went up another cup size it was a little bothersome trying to find a comfortable bra. Then, when it went up a third cup size, her skin had given way and her tits were covered in angry red marks.

Morning sickness hadn’t been too bad. She’d felt nauseas but never threw up. The nausea, instead of turning her away from food, just made her want it more. The doctor had told her that losing weight during the first trimester was just fine and nothing to be worried about. Then she stepped on the scale and had gone up seven pounds and he’d said, “Well it looks like losing too much weight isn’t something you should worry about!”

She’d whine about gaining too much weight and then wake up in the middle of the night _needing_ Pop-Tarts. Oliver got her whatever she needed. A hotdog at four in the morning? Yeah, I think the gas station does hotdogs. A vanilla shake from the McDonalds four towns over because “they put the _good_ cherries on top and it really matters and I’m sorry I’m crying but I really need this milkshake _now_.”

And even when he walked in on Felicity in the nursery furiously cleaning and crying at the same time because “I’m so excited and this nursery is so beautiful and I love you so much” he just held her and pet her hair and helped her reorganize the diapers for the fiftieth time while she freaked over whether or not they needed another box in size newborn.

He brought her a half-glassful of red wine one night when they were working in the Foundry. She was just reading police reports but was crying. Spring had just started and the mixture of heat and humidity had swelled her fingers and they’d spent a good half-hour that morning trying to get her wedding ring off her hand. They now hung on a chain around her neck and even though she knew it was silly it had still really upset her.

She drank the small bit of wine slowly, savoring each sip. And Oliver did the salmon ladder a few times just for her and when it was all done they had some slightly-awkward sex where Felicity tried not to fart but it was really hard because apparently Smoak women became really gassy when pregnant.

\----

The first time Felicity felt the baby move she was almost sixteen weeks along. Her little bump could only be seen if she sucked in her tummy and laid down flat. Sometimes, early in the morning, if she didn’t pee fifteen times the night before, her bump would stick out. But then her bladder would empty and should would be left with just her soft, puffy tummy that looked more like it was carrying a pizza than was carrying the miracle of life.

She was laying down, reading a book, and experienced what felt like someone poking her from inside, right below her belly button.

Felicity would like to say that she then cried with happiness and called Oliver and spent the next couple hours holding his hand on her stomach and waiting for the moment he could feel it too, but she didn’t.

Instead, it kind of freaked her out. She got out of bed and walked around the house before going into the garden. She just walked for a couple hours freaking out over whether they had enough covers for the sockets and what if the baby didn’t like computers? What other hobbies did she really have?

She didn’t feel anything more that night, but the next morning at breakfast, she was pretty sure she felt a little wiggle. This time, she smiled.

\----

The first time Oliver felt the baby move, he’d just been spooning her with his hand splayed on her slowly-growing bump. He’d jumped up and gone “Oh my God was that the baby?” and when Felicity nodded suddenly she was laying flat on her back and he had both hands on her bump. He waited patiently for a good fifteen minutes before she shifted and had to go to the bathroom.

She couldn’t keep his hands off her bump after that.

\----

The night before their first ultrasound, Felicity had a nightmare that she’d slept in and missed the appointment. So that morning she woke up at five, even though the appointment wasn’t until eleven-thirty, and just messed around on the computer. The nurse at the clinic had told her to drink two glasses of water and to try not to go to the bathroom.

This was of course impossible. As if she hadn’t needed to pee constantly since getting the plus-sign on the pregnancy test, she could also hear the water fountain in the garden splashing around. Oliver watched her squirm on the computer chair before he told her to “stop dancing around and just use the bathroom” and then she disappeared in a blonde-headed blur up the hallway and onto a toilet.

That afternoon as the tech glided the wand over her belly, she pointed out all the parts of the body. The little head, the little heart, the little hands, and the little feet. There were the fingers and toes and the baby squirmed and kicked if the tech pressed down too hard. During one of the kicks, the tech froze the frame and pointed at a little white blur on the screen.

“You see that? That’s the penis and there are the testicles. Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Queen, you’re having a boy.”

Felicity’s heart skipped a beat and she looked up at Oliver, whose eyes were starting to glaze over with tears. Her vision became blurry soon after that, and the joyful crying jostled her bladder and she had to run to the bathroom before the tech could continue.

\----

Felicity’s regular pants had stopped fitting pretty early on. A mixture of baby bump plus eating too many potato chips with way too much sodium had led her pants to be just a touch too tight at around eight weeks. At around twenty-seven weeks, however, her maternity pants stopped fitting around her thighs.

A volcano nearby could’ve erupted, if one was just watching Felicity. She anguished and moped and ate a lot of ice cream until she finally accepted her fate and bought new pants. She also resolved to only eat 2500 calories a day for the rest of her pregnancy, which didn’t last too long.

\----

Oliver and Diggle were pretty protective of Felicity before she got pregnant, and now she couldn’t even turn a corner without one of them popping up. She would occasionally have the feeling of being watched, usually when she was out in the park or at a store, and would look up and see a member of Diggle’s security team looking at her.

She pitched a fit the first couple times but realized it wasn’t making a difference. The guards were just getting sneakier and she didn’t have any super hero super-senses to sniff them out. Eventually she just resigned herself to being followed. At least now she didn’t have to find someone to go out to eat with her in dire situations.

(Dire situations of course being having an intense Thai craving while Oliver was in an important meeting.)

\----

Felicity had gone back to the IT department about halfway through her pregnancy. She didn’t really feel like dealing with super-judgey board members who still disapproved of their marriage, and she had a feeling that them seeing her all pregnant and pimply (like a teenager! She thought she was done with pimples!) would simply bring more snide comments and rude remarks.

At first it was fine, being pregnant and working. She was constantly showered with attention from the other women and she really enjoyed it, actually. At the beginning, she still had the mobility to go under desks, fix wires, and walk up flights of stairs. As time went on, however, she’d have to brace herself on her knees, ask for help, and use the elevator.

Also, it was getting really difficult to get into her shoes.

At first it was manageable. By the end of the day her feet were kind of achey and puffy but if she elevated them they went down to normal in an hour or so. And then it might take a few hours but they went down eventually. And then they never went down and she glared enviously at all the tiny ankles in the building.

She was trying to shove her feet into a pair of nude kitten-heels when Oliver asked her if maybe she would want to stop working now.

She refused. She was thirty-seven weeks pregnant at that point. She could soldier through three more weeks. Her mother had worked until her water broke and dammit, she could too.

A couple days later, at her weekly doctor’s appointment, her doctor pressed his thumbs into her shins, and when he pulled his hands away, the thumb prints were indented in her skin. She looked at the doctor in horror but he just sort of shrugged, said it was normal, and that maybe she should think about not going to work and resting a bit.

So Oliver won that battle.

\----

The last weeks were plagued with the most embarrassing problem Felicity had ever had. Every morning at around eleven, she would feel regular, consistent pain in her lower abdomen. Of course, she thought it was labor. She started timing the pains, eleven minutes apart. She was excited and eventually had to go to the bathroom.

She pooped and the pain went away.

It happened the next morning as well, she got excited, looked over her hospital bag, went to the bathroom, and it went away.

How in the world could she mistake bathroom cues for labor? So humiliating. At least she hadn’t called the hospital or Oliver.

\----

Oliver had stopped his Hood activities for the last month of her pregnancy. Most of the time in the evening was spent laying on the bed with her and watching TV.

Sex had gotten weird as her belly grew. Doggy-style made her bump feel too heavy, her on top left her out of breath, laying on her back made the baby lay on her spine and just felt weird, and spooning while doing it made the baby kick around and it weirded both of them out. They eventually got to a point where she propped herself up on a bunch of pillows and Oliver awkwardly thrusted into her without putting any body weight on her abdomen.  

All in all Felicity felt less than sexy. She hadn’t been able to groom her pubes for a significant time, her breasts were covered in red stretch marks, her thighs were super big, and she was covered in acne that could rival her pus-filled year in the sixth grade. Oliver still kissed her and touched her and got boners when she bent over, but it did nothing to make her feel better.

One night they were making love and she was wearing a shirt, when all of a sudden Oliver looked at her chest weird and she looked down. Her right boob was soaked! Oliver pulled away from her, “Is everything okay?” while Felicity pulled her shirt away to look down the collar.

Yep. She was leaking breastmilk.

\----

Oliver had gone out for a run when she felt the first contraction. At first she convinced herself she just had to poop. So she went to the bathroom. And then another couple contractions went by. And she went to the bathroom again. She was pacing the bedroom when a hard one hit, and she had to grip the top of the dresser.

“Okay, that’s why women get epidurals,” she said, and then she started looking for her phone.

It took three tries before Oliver picked up his phone, and from how out of breath he sounded, Felicity had her suspicions that he might’ve done a quick vigilante fight during his jog. But he raced home and together they timed the contractions.

Seven minutes apart. Okay. The doctor had said to wait until they were five minutes apart for half an hour before we go to the hospital. That’s no problem, we’ll just stay here for now.

Oliver sat on the bed, watching her like a hawk as she walked through her contractions. He tried to get up every now and then but she snapped at him and he sat back down. Eventually though her got up and applied some counter-pressure to her hips, which was a god-send.

“I think we should go to the hospital now, Felicity.”

“No. The doctor said to wait so we’re going to wait. My water hasn’t even broke. I’m not wasting anyone’s time in the hospital.”

Oliver scoffed at that and they got into a small fight before she finally threw her hands up.

“Fine! We’ll go. But I’m blaming you if we get sent home to labor for a bit longer.”

The drive to the hospital was awful. She wanted to walk around a move with each contraction but instead had to sit still as Oliver drove way too fast to Starling City hospital. It was dark out, eleven at night, and she waddled as quickly as she could to the emergency room entrance.

The check-in process was easy enough, she had pre-registered, and a nurse came down with a wheelchair.

“Do you need to use a wheelchair, honey?” the older woman asked.

“No, I think I can walk just fine,” Felicity replied, and she looked up at Oliver, whose arm was now wrapped tightly around her hips.

\----

The nurse had checked her cervix. “Five centimeters!” she said, “Congratulations, you’re in labor!”

“Thank goodness,” Felicity blurted out, “I thought I just had to poop.”

The room was silent, so Felicity started babbling.

“I mean, the past couple weeks I’ve been getting pains and I’ve been thinking I was in labor but actually I just needed to poop. I knew I didn’t need to poop this time though because I’d gone like, twice in the past hour and I was still having pains so I was like, maybe these are contractions!”

Oliver gave her a look that said “please stop saying poop” and she pressed her lips together. But the nurses just nodded and put the IV in the the blood-pressure cuff on and talked amongst each other.

“What are you thinking about for pain medication?” the nurse asked.

“An epidural,” Felicity said, “But not for a couple more hours. I don’t want labor to stall.”

The nurse raised her brow at that and started to respond, “Well actually you’re already progressing pretty-” but cut off when she looked over Felicity’s shoulder. Felicity looked back at Oliver, who had painted the picture of innocence on his face and shrugged at her.

“Sure, that’s fine Mrs. Queen,” the nurse nodded and left the room.

\----

They watched television for about two hours as Felicity wandered back and forth from the bathroom to the bed to the window to the hallway and back again. A woman yelled and grunted somewhere else in the hospital and then a baby cried. Hormones rushed and Felicity teared up. And then she just kept walking around.

Eventually the doctor arrived, and he looked pretty tired. “Hey Queens,” he said, “Lots of babies tonight. Sure you don’t want to wait until tomorrow?”

Both Felicity and Oliver laughed. The doctor asked if they would be comfortable with him going down to one of the spare rooms and taking a nap, and they both said they were. Oliver looked ready to take a nap as well, but he was forcing himself up for Felicity’s sake. One of the nurses came in just as the doctor was leaving.

“Doctor, are you sure you don’t want to check her one more time?”

The doctor looked kind of hesitant in the doorway, his exhaustion and professionalism fighting, but he eventually walked back in, putting on a glove.

Felicity pursed her lips. Getting her cervix checked wasn’t exactly a fun task, and the doctor seemed to be taking longer than normal. He murmured something to the nurse before he pulled his hand out and gave a weary smile.

“Congratulations, you’re ten centimeters.”

Felicity shot up into a sitting position, “What?!”

Her water broke.

The nurses and the doctor and Oliver tried to calm her down as her heart started racing, “Oh my God, oh my God, this is going too fast. I haven’t gotten my epidural yet!” She kept trying to push herself up to, she didn’t know, run away?

“Felicity, Felicity, look at me,” Oliver said. She looked into his blue eyes and tried to calm her heart rate down, “Everything’s going to be fine.”

\----

Felicity Queen pushed for forty minutes, giving birth to Robert Conrad Queen at 4:24 am. The doctor placed him on her chest and she wrapped her arms around him tightly. He was slimy and his face was swollen but his beautiful blue eyes looked at her and she fell in love.

The hormones and adrenaline rushed through her veins making everything a blur, but she looked up and saw Oliver openly crying, and he leaned down and kissed her lips and then kissed his son. He held her hand as the baby latched onto her nipple and Felicity winced in pain, and when the circus finally died down and they were in the recovery room, he laid down on the bed with her and stroked her hair.

“Oliver,” Felicity murmured, stroking the baby’s head as he suckled on her breast (which he had been doing for eighty minutes now, come on, you can stop now). “I’m never doing that again.”

Oliver chuckled and agreed, kissing the back of her head and rubbing his hand along her arm.

Seven months later she insisted she’d never said such a thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> My tumblr is angelaandmels.tumblr.com


End file.
